Leaving work for the last time this afternoon, I dumped the bags containing assorted
bits of salvage from the office onto the passenger seat, and shoved a CD into the
stereo.
The opening notes of Rock 'N' Roll Star swelled into raucous crescendo as
the car screamed out of the cold dark of the building's shadow into the blazing
sunshine of a gorgeous early-summer evening - and just for a moment, soundtrack
and symbolism converged to turn my life into the closing shot of a Jerry
Bruckheimer movie. The camera should have panned slowly up from the bloodied-but-unbowed
renegade smile creasing my face behind my shades to show the car roaring away down
a deserted desert road, dust flaring up off its wheels as the screen faded to black
and the credits rolled, music blaring to lift us, to remind us that tomorrow is
another day and that every ending is just a beginning.
I actual fact, fifty yards outside the carpark I hit a red light.
Which is probably one of the big reasons why you don't see the likes of Bruce Willis
fighting terrorists/drug cartels/zombies round Watford way, to be honest.
Twenty new names have gone onto the Artistic Role-Call Roll
Of Shame, varying from the immensely satisfying (Chris Evans) to the horribly
depressing (Jarvis Cocker).
Mike, I'm
afraid that Ozzy Osbourne can't make the list on the strength of The Osbournes,
strong indication of the fall of human society though that particular show might
be. Desperate attention-seeking isn't what we're condemning here - I do that in
my spare time. The List is reserved for those whose integrity is for sale, who are
willing to take money to shill things other than their family and their own scraggy,
drug-numbed has-been arse.
Well, gentle reader, there's bad news, and there's good news.
The bad news is that as of next week your humble correspondent will be re-joining
the serried ranks of Maggie's Millions (or should that be Blair's Big Number these
days?). Yep, just over a year since getting off my fat arse and getting back into
full-time employment - in a job I actually, honestly fucking liked, just to put
the tin fucking lid on an absolutely shitty situation - it seems that life as a
doley waster beckons once again.
The good news is there'll probably be an upturn in the quality and quantity of my
posts here, because there's nothing like a healthy slice of perfect despair to bring
out the frustrated writer in me. Clouds, silver linings, you know.
Fucking, fucking, FUCKING hell.
I can feel the numb, resigned shock starting to wear off and the gut-clenching fear
starting to take over. Which is nice. Now if you'll excuse me, there's a cheap bottle
of claret that's desperately trying to get my attention.
I found myself sitting through Unbreakable
not so terribly long ago and, on balance, rather enjoyed the experience. Which is
a bit of a pity because if I'd hated it, my oh-so-clever title for this entry could
have been "Unwatchable".
It wins brownie-points for a strong cast. You know what you're going to get with
Bruce Willis - like Harrison Ford in a vest, he's been working that same "everyman"
shtick for the better part of twenty years and God love him, he couldn't stop now
if he wanted to. You know what you're going to get from Sam Jackson, too, and even
burdened as he is here with a preposterous haircut and a character who spends half
the film delivering lines to people's crotches, he still brings Towering Righteousness
more convincingly than any man alive:
"Do you see any Teletubbies in here? Do you see a slender plastic tag clipped
to my shirt with my name printed on it? Do you see a little Asian child with a blank
expression on his face sitting outside on a mechanical helicopter that shakes when
you put quarters in it? No? Well, that's what you see at a toy store. And you must
think you're in a toy store, because you're here shopping for an infant named Jeb!"
It's a good, but not great, film. It successfully avoids falling into cookie-cutter
Hollywood formula-thriller territory and the final twist, while slightly silly,
came as a genuine surprise. Its essential theme - what makes a person a hero? -
is covered with a reasonably light touch and with some nice (if sometimes muddled
and too-dark-and-moody-for-its-own-good) visual imagery.
My main problem with Unbreakable, to be honest, was that its comic-book motif -
so central to the movie that it is made explicit in its very first frames - felt
clunky, lazily-done and just made me uncomfortable all the way through. I was willing
to give it the benefit of the doubt because I was being entertained, just accepting
that it's going to feel wrong if a character who loves comics is being written by
someone who doesn't until... Um. Look. There's no real way I can explain any further
without giving away the ending, so if you haven't seen the film yet and you intend
to, I'd skip on a couple of paragraphs.
Still with me?
I'm not kidding. I'm about to blow this bloody thing wide open. And while Unbreakable
isn't a Sixth Sense, where there's absolutely no bloody point seeing the film if
you know the ending, you're still going to enjoy a pretty-good movie significantly
less if you plough on.
Okay. But don't come crying to me like a bitch wi' a skinned knee an' shit saying
I wrecked it for you.
Last chance.
Right. Here we go.
"Do you know how to tell who the arch-villain is in a comic-book?"
asks Samuel Jackson's Elijah Price after he's been revealed as a card-carrying nutter.
"He's the exact opposite of the hero!"
"No he bloody isn't!" cried your humble correspondent.
"Do you know how to tell who the arch-villain is in a comic-book?"
Um... yes. Yes, I think I might be able to work this out. Isn't the arch-villain
that headcase in the black Spandex with the tendency toward megalomanaical laughter
who spends his spare time building things with names like The Sun-Crusher?
To be honest, you don't even need to bother looking for the hollowed-out volcano/space-station/abandoned
fairground housing the Sun-Crusher, really. All that's actuallynecessary is to check
the 'phone book then go and knock on the front door of anyone with a doctorate whose
surname that sounds a bit like "Octopus", "Klaw" or "Death".
For example, Dr. Doom's given name is - I kid you not - Victor von Doom.
Victor von Doom.
Poor little sod.
Saddled with a moniker like that as a kid, what chance do you have of growing up
halfway well-adjusted? Let's face it - your only career options are going to be
dentistry and cackling super-villainy. While they're both about on a par in terms
of your ability to inflict horrible revenge on a society that shunned you, the world-domination
trade lets you pick your own hours, so there's no real contest.
But that's missing the point. Elijah Price claims that the villain of the piece
is always "the exact opposite of the hero."
I've never heard such rubbish! Reed
Richards, aka Mr. Fantastic (a name given to him by his wife because he's capable
of stretching or expanding any part of his body at will), aka the nerd in charge
of the Fantastic Four
is reputedly Earth's greatest scientist. So by the Price Theory, his nemesis ought
to be some mouth-breathing simpleton who has trouble counting to eleven without
taking his trousers down.
So have the Fantastic Four spent the last forty years having a string of four-colour
adventures chronicling their repeated foilings of dastardly schemes hatched by Geri
Halliwell and George W. Bush? Have they bollocks.
In fact, their arch-enemy is none other than Earth's second-greatest scientist,
the aforementioned Victor "Thanks, Mum" von Doom (I s'pose that if he
had motivation to hang around the school labs at break-time, since he was bound
to get beaten up if he dared set foot on the playground). And there are even those
that would say that the whole "second greatest" ranking is at least open
to debate given that Doom never, for example, designed
a spaceship that wasn't able to shield its occupants from cosmic rays.
This isn't an isolated example. Batman is as twisted and mentally scarred as any
of the cavalcade of freaks he fights, although the most direct parallel is probably
the one between him and Two-Face who, if I may wax pretentious for a moment, externalizes
the duality at the heart of Bruce Wayne/Batman. Marshal
Law's Sleepman hates superheroes and wants to see them punished as much as the
Marshal does. The Red Skull is a product of Nazi Germany as least to the same degree
that Captain America is, for good and for ill, a product of American society. Judge
Death just takes Judge Dredd's philosophy that everyone is guilty of something to
a higher level - that because all are guilty, all need to be punished. The villain
of Watchmen...
no, if you haven't read it, I can't spoil it. Suffice to say that he's more grist
to the mill.
Perhaps it's more fair to say that much as the most comic-book heroes might try
to convince themselves that they are completely dissimilar to their nemesis, in
actual fact our heroes and villains are much more in common than they, or we, want
to admit.
